Node.js has released version 0.12, its first significant release since 2013's 0.10.
The much-anticipated version 0.12, once described as "imminent" in January 2014, comes with a raft of Module and JS API changes, an updated version of V8, and many debugging enhancements. Significantly, it also comes with initial support for ECMAScript Internationalization API 1.0 (ECMA-402).

DuoCode is a C# to JavaScript compiler that promises to allow developers to build HTML5 applications using C# and the .NET framework inside of Visual Studio. InfoQ has interviewed its creators to learn more.

Announced at last week’s React Conf, React Native is a version of the popular React JavaScript library targeted solely at mobile developers. On the surface React Native looks very similar to React, with JavaScript declarations of reactive user interfaces; but behind the scenes React Native interfaces are backed by platform specific native controls rather than DOM elements.

Rob Eisenberg, formerly of AngularJS, has released for early previews Aurelia: his next-generation JavaScript framework -- promising a first of its kind "adaptive" databinding engine allowing rich two-way databinding between vanilla JavaScript and DOM (including Web Components).

JHipster, the Yeoman generator for Spring Boot/Angular projects, released version 2.0 earlier this month, with some notable changes: 1) the AngularJS code has been modularized, making it easier to use JHipster for larger projects and 2) Liquibase is now able to create "diffs" between the JPA code and the database, making it easier to update your database schema.

After many years of working on HTML5 support, YouTube has decided to use their HTML5 video player as the default for modern browsers, using the old Flash-based player only for legacy browsers. Using MPEG-DASH and W3C Media Source Extensions, YouTube can use Adaptive Bitrate streaming to reduce buffering and improve initial playback speed.

Guillaume Laforge has released Groovy 2.4, bringing full Android support.
LaForge says the new Android support "allows developers to write Android applications fully using Groovy, with much less boilerplate code than raw Java."

Netflix recently hosted the Silicon Valley Java User Group to talk about Nashorn, "The Hidden Weapon of JDK 8." In this presentation the Netflix Partner Tools team described how they’ve started leveraging JavaScript in their services.

The io.js team has released version 1.0 -- but the versioning does not suggest the platform is "production ready."
Despite overtaking Node, io.js clarifies the release in its own FAQ:
"The choice to release as 1.0.x was not to signify that io.js should be considered production-ready, but because it was a significant enough release from Node.js to warrant a major version increment," it says.